2016B Day 10: Snakes on a Nasmyth

Today was an exciting day for the whole team: MagAO is mounted, poised, and ready to go!

The adsec is back, has been flattened, and is lookin’ good (after extensive reconstructive surgery).
The pyramid wavefront sensor has been updated (and is swankier than ever).
And finally, MagAO is bolted to the Clay telescope, and is ready to show us what its got!

But we didn’t do this alone. Our fuzzy friend Greg/Gary/Galileo Guanaco appears to be quite interested in the goings-on at the telescope. We caught him peeking at us in the control room this afternoon. According to Dr. Katie Morzinski, he has adopted us as his herd. Or he’s just a creeper. You can decide.

Our fuzzy friend

Greg/Gary/Galileo Guanaco didn’t prove to be TOO much help. He offered absolutely no assistance this evening, and we were forced to proceed without him. We soldiered on and brought MagAO up from the deep to be happily reunited with the telescope.

MagAO rises again

Once MagAO was back on the nasmyth, it took some expert maneuvering by some very talented people to get this 1800 lb beauty mounted back on the telescope.

Mounting MagAO

And after some fancy footwork, MagAO was reunited with its beloved telescope.

The MagAO-X PI approves

There were some final inspections by Dr. Laird Close, PI….

Laird makes some final checks

And some tricksy things to be dealt with, like the ‘anaconda’ – the snake-like coil carrying all of MagAO’s communication cables, power, and plumbing that wraps around the instrument very much like its namesake….

The “anaconda”

But in the end, it was all worth it. In the immortal words of Dr. Jared Males: “We’re back, baby!”